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scallops

I wanted to bring my better half out to a new fish head place last night that I’ve been meaning to try for a while but it was raining heavily so there were no tables outside. It was also the Deepavali public holidays so a lot of people were out eating that night.

Unable to get a table, we went for a steamboat dinner instead at The Joy of Sharing. This is a very popular hotpot place that’s constantly packed but we managed to get seated. I always say that I’m not particularly fond of soup dishes or tofu (and steamboat has both in spades) but truth to be told, my palate has changed a lot as I’ve grown up.

I’ll eat anything and enjoy it nowadays. We decided to go for a mixed Seafood Superior Soup and Tomyam Soup combination in our hotpot. The Seafood Superior Soup is the flagship of The Joy of Sharing and it’s actually quite nice. I also upgraded our order from the Pulau Ketam Set (RM 33.60 for 2 pax) to the Special Mix Set (RM 37.60 / 2 pax).

The latter has everything the former seafood heavy option has, plus some pork offerings which you can cook shabu-shabu style in the hotpot:

Thick cut bacon

Pork balls

Pork slices

Scallops

Prawns

Fish balls

Fish noodles

Tofu

Eggs (quail and chicken)

Enoki mushrooms

Vegetables

Homemade dumplings

Rice vermicelli

Noodles

…and that’s just the ones I can remember.

It’s actually a pretty good deal and I can see why the place is packed all the time. The service is good and refills for soup comes pretty fast too.

I found that I actually rather enjoy eating hotpot/steamboat during a rainy night and having to build up the flavors of the soup in the pot by gradually adding in ingredients is fun! The Joy of Sharing also has a new “soup” called Silky Porridge which is an innovative congee based soup for steamboat!

Parking can be a bit of a pain in that area, especially if it’s raining but as per custom with steamboat places over here, the staff actually helps you with parking. You can double park and block someone else’s car and if they finish before you, one of the waiters will come and get you to shift your car.

Our car was also blocked when we were done but the diner came out in less than a minute so I thought the system works really well. It’s a good dinner and we enjoyed the 2 hour respite from the rain, eating hearty and warm hotpot – the Seafood Superior Soup is really good.

We’ll be back to try the new Silky Porridge “soup” when we feel like eating something more substantial. The bill came up to RM 48.40 for two, inclusive of drinks, which is quite cheap considering the items bundled into the set.

Little Beach Boat House is a quaint little place just beside the bay at Port Stephens. You can hear the waves coming in at night and the wait staff is a duet of twins! The two Aussie girls look so much like each other that I just had to take a photo of them.

The service is attentive and friendly and they had a special of the day, which I ordered. I actually recorded one of the twins reciting the dish in question so I can remember it, and she kindly obliged. Heh. This is one of the best restaurants in town according to Sharon, who dined with us last night.

There was popcorn on the table – a growing trend that I’ve noticed in a lot of restaurants, who serve this in lieu of bread. I think it’s great! The dishes has a bit of a modernist twist in them too, with foams, purees and jelly sauce components on most of the dishes.

I was more interested in beef cheek – a cut which is really flavorful if done right and they do it well here. It’s generously mixed into the crispy potato croquette and a nice touch is the black garlic mayo (the fermented garlic we use to make bak kut teh back home).

This is my order, the special of the day. I didn’t know it was fried though, since I don’t particularly like grilled fish (any other cooking method is better) but I kept an open mind. I wanted to eat barramundi since Australia is one of two countries where you can find it. I asked the waitress for a wine pairing and she suggested either Sauvignon Blanc or a Riesling but “personally I’ll go for the former”.

I took her advice and it tasted great with the barramundi! The Sauvignon Blanc is very sweet and pairs well with the fish. The skin of the barramundi is crisp and it’s a classic white fish which flakes well but has a stronger taste than other popular white fish like cod and John Dory. The barramundi is excellent when eaten with the sweet and smoky roast pumpkin though!

This is probably the restaurant’s flagship dish. It came on a huge wooden platter and has 3 (three) different pork items on it, including a crispy pork belly the size of a small steak! It’s beautiful and the apple jam has been jellyfied, giving it a bit of a modernist twist.

The dinner at Little Beach Boat House was great, and the company better – we talked late into the night about everything, and I learned a lot about the Port Stephens area too. Tourism New South Wales and Tourism Australia picked up the bill (thanks Duglass and Sharon) and we all had a bit of fun with the friendly twin waitresses who look so much alike! :)

I’m still at Port Stephens, heading back to Sydney later! I’ll be here until next week and you can follow what I’m up to on my other social media channels coz I got an AUD 2 per day data plan!

This is a really simple but delicious meal. It’s basically ramen that’s been spiced up with “premium” ingredients. The chilli crab instant noodles caught our eye while grocery shopping in Seremban – all of the ingredients were bought there while on the way back from Melaka.

The “semi dry” bit sparked a bit of discussion between us about how it’ll turn out so we chucked it into the basket. It turned out to be a great decision! Myojo Chilli Crab Flavor Semi Dry Ramen is currently our favorite brand of instant noodles.

It’s a lot more expensive than regular instant noodles though – there’s only 4 packets in the RM 12.99 pack but this Singaporean ramen weighs in at 135 grams per packet (regular ones are somewhere between 65-80 grams)! I remember my girlfriend telling me it’s like eating out since each packet is slightly over RM 3 (!!!).

I also got a packet of scallops – these cost RM 32.50 for just five (5) of the juicy mollusks but I wanted to follow the seafood theme. :D

Ham was her addition. It’s pork sandwich ham from the cold cuts section but she insisted and I have to admit, it turned out well.

The final item to round up the chilli crab noodle dish is asparagus! I’ll tell you a funny story about it:

I was doing all the cooking and heated olive oil in a frying pan before dumping in the asparagus. I was using a spatula to push it around and we were both standing around the heating element chatting and noticing nothing amiss.

It then dawned on me that we didn’t have water so we had to scramble to add water and salt to cook the asparagus.

What was even funnier was that we found out (much) later you *can* actually pan fry asparagus but we didn’t know it at the time.

The scallops were pan fried till golden brown and an egg done sunny side up for good measure.

Ham was added to the chilli crab noodles and since we didn’t have bowls big enough, we used a rice cooker pot to serve it. Haha! It was good though, we couldn’t finish it and reheated the rest by using the “Keep Warm” setting on the rice cooker the next morning (which tasted even better).

It’s pretty good, these semi-dry noodles – if you follow the instructions carefully, it turns out to be like noodles coated with gravy. It’s so good we’ve been looking for it ever since! :)

It’s a battle of premium vs. proletariat ingredients! The measly pack of scallops set me back a staggering RM 42.35 while the gargantuan whole pig’s heart retails at a very affordable RM 3.50.

Let me clarify – this was supposed to be an angel hair pasta dish, but I forgot to get the pasta and thus we made do with this pack of organic black bean noodles. The texture is surprisingly similar and it looks the bit too. Heh!

Okay, to start off, you’ll need to ingest some ethanol to get you into a righteous cooking mood. My tipple of choice is Absolut Vodka.

The Tell-Tale Heart. Hmph. I shall give you a heart massage, CPR style.

How do you cook a pig’s heart? Beats me, I’ve never cooked one before. I decided to wrap it in aluminum foil and chuck it into a fan assisted oven for 10 minutes.

It turns out that 10 minutes isn’t quite enough so I suggest 20 minutes instead. I also took the liberty of rubbing salt all over the pig’s heart for my version of marinating. Heh!

Next comes the scallops – scallops are reasonably fast to cook after defrosting so I just dunked it in warm (not hot) water for about a minute before draining.

With the major ingredients out of the way, let’s get to the all-important sauce!

Leggo’s ready made sauces already has bits of meat and stuff inside but we decided to fry some onions and garlic and chopped some sausages into it for a heartier sauce.

We used grapeseed oil instead of olive oil for the frying, no particular reason for the choice – it was just there. The sausages were seared for a bit before the entire container of alfredo sauce was emptied into the mixture.

Leave the sauce on (very) low heat and start cooking the noodles.

I put in salt and a dash of grapeseed oil in the boiling water, much like cooking spaghetti. Drain the noodles after 3 minutes. I’ll love to inject the word al dente somewhere in here but there’s no way to get black bean noodles al dente. Oh wait, I just put it in twice. ;)

I emptied the noodles into a high sided plate and liberally poured the pasta sauce with garlic, onions and sausages on top. This is also where you add the powdered cheese and Tabasco sauce.

The sides are important as a barrier against spillage when you start mixing the alfredo sauce into the noodles.